D&D 5E Factions and Visibility

[Princelucianus]

I have a question (I couldn't find an answer for with the search function).

I'm going to DM 'Storm King's Thunder' and planned for the first time in my life to use factions.
But I'm surprised that any agent with some knowledge, recognizes the agents of the other factions (maybe not the Zentarim).
That leads to all kinds of difficulties (spotting factions at key locations could lead to....... whatever you can think of).
Players can see that other players belong to different factions (if you opt for that) which could lead to strive within the group.

But if the agents' insignia are not visible, that leads to other problems (you need help, the faction says they'll send help but how do you recognize them).
Secret signs are also dangerous, because a little bit of torture would reveal them to any other faction/monster.

This is not specific to SKT of course.

How do you use factions, specifically with the issues I wrote above?

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

As I understand it, most factions aren't actually at war with each other. There may be some economic and political competition but they aren't stabbing random members of the other factions in the street.
More to the point, it is in all the faction's best interests to solve the problems in SKT, so their agents working on that will likely be under orders to cooperate with each other to get the job done.

 

[tommybahama]

The way our DM presented it was that there were these strange attacks against towns and villages controlled by the various factions all across Faerun. So we (the party) were made up of representatives of the various factions assigned to work together to investigate these attacks and discover its source.

The other players picked factions before me so I ended up with the first barbarian recruit to the Order of the Gauntlet. I imagined that no knight or Paladin would work with a Zhentarim which is why the Gauntlet recruited my barbarian. I further imagined that my orders were to protect the Zhentarim and keep him alive so he could use his subterfuge and scheming to discover the source of the attacks. That way I could turn a blind eye to his pick pocketing, grave robbing and strong arming of NPCs.

We've had some player turnover and whenever we picked up a new player we just roleplayed that they were fresh recruits sent from the factions to fill out our party, or members of other parties given the same mission but that got broken apart at some point along the way.

 

[the_redbeard]

Secret signs are also dangerous, because a little bit of torture would reveal them to any other faction/monster.

Don't want to get political on this, but the science and data show that torture doesn't work.
TL;DR the article: people will say anything to stop the torture, making things up as much as saying any truth.

The neuroscience of interrogation: Why torture doesn’t work

"Enhanced interrogation" may get someone to talk, but there's no evidence that it's the truth. A book cross-examines the true consequences of torture

www.newscientist.com

Torture Doesn't Work

A former senior interrogator in Iraq says that abusing prisoners results in unreliable information, costs American lives, and it still hasn’t turned up Bin Laden.

www.thedailybeast.com

 

[MarkB]

Think of it as the difference between uniformed and plainclothes police officers. Members of a faction who are working openly for that faction can and do display their affiliation, and they generally steer clear of places where that faction isn't welcome.

Members of the faction who do need to venture into such areas, or who otherwise need to keep their faction's involvement a secret, disguise themselves as appropriate.

 

[MarkB]

Don't want to get political on this, but the science and data show that torture doesn't work.
TL;DR the article: people will say anything to stop the torture, making things up as much as saying any truth.

The neuroscience of interrogation: Why torture doesn’t work

"Enhanced interrogation" may get someone to talk, but there's no evidence that it's the truth. A book cross-examines the true consequences of torture

www.newscientist.com

Torture Doesn't Work

A former senior interrogator in Iraq says that abusing prisoners results in unreliable information, costs American lives, and it still hasn’t turned up Bin Laden.

www.thedailybeast.com

Which is why torturers will start by asking questions they know the answers to, and make it very clear that false answers will not stop the torture.

 

[the_redbeard]

I have a question (I couldn't find an answer for with the search function).

I'm going to DM 'Storm King's Thunder' and planned for the first time in my life to use factions.
But I'm surprised that any agent with some knowledge, recognizes the agents of the other factions (maybe not the Zentarim).
That leads to all kinds of difficulties (spotting factions at key locations could lead to....... whatever you can think of).
Players can see that other players belong to different factions (if you opt for that) which could lead to strive within the group.

But if the agents' insignia are not visible, that leads to other problems (you need help, the faction says they'll send help but how do you recognize them).
Secret signs are also dangerous, because a little bit of torture would reveal them to any other faction/monster.

This is not specific to SKT of course.

How do you use factions, specifically with the issues I wrote above?

I use factions in all my games. However, unless the players really all desire otherwise, at session zero the players pick a general "side" and don't pick factions that compete directly or otherwise oppose each other.

As far as discovering covert contact methods, the opposition would have to discover a faction member in the first place. If the faction is paranoid enough, the discovered faction member was being observed/check in on by another faction member who can alert the organization that they have a compromised link.

Magic can make a secretive faction campaign very complicated, between scrying, charms, detect thoughts. You'd want to determine how much magic you want in your campaign or it becomes a magical arms race.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Which is why torturers will start by asking questions they know the answers to, and make it very clear that false answers will not stop the torture.

Sure, people have been doing that for a very long time, and that still doesn't make it effective or reliable. Humans have been trying to make it so it was for thousands of years, including in this era (when the US heavily applied science to it), and it still didn't become reliable or particularly useful. At some point you have to accept a technique doesn't work well for anything but instilling terror. Trickery and false friendship have proven vastly more effective for getting information. With secret signs trickery and observation would be the primary concern I suspect.

 

[Blue Orange]

They could know about each other but be working towards a common goal, as the prior posters said.

You could see them as equivalent to coworkers with opposite political affiliations--we'll fight fires together, and we make sure never to discuss politics...

 

[see]

TL;DR the article: people will say anything to stop the torture, making things up as much as saying any truth.

This is a problem in real life, sure.

In D&D, you cast zone of truth.